The recording of the world première of Georg Friedrich Haas’ I can’t breathe | in memoriam Eric Garner by Marco Blaauw can now be streamed on the website of the Kölner Philharmonie:
Georg Friedrich Haas recently gave an exclusive interview to composer Vincent Ho of Musical Toronto for the Winnipeg Music Festival, which ran from 31 January to 6 February.
In the interview, the composer focuses on his works Traum in des Sommers Nacht, Open Spaces II and his String Quartet No. 6, all of which were performed at this year’s Winnipeg Music Festival:
Congratulations to Pierre Boulez for being awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Martha Gilmer, a close colleague of Pierre Boulez, accepted the award on his behalf at yesterday’s ceremony.
The best @TheGRAMMYs lifetime? #Grammy2015 Pierre #Boulezat90 @uemusic pic.twitter.com/OB2JeNcTi4
— logan ʞ˙ young (@logankyoung) February 9, 2015
On 7 February at 20:00 Czech radio station Vltava will broadcast a recording of the first performance of the new critical edition of Janáček’s The Makropulos Case, which was premièred at the Janáčkovo divadlo on 21 November 2014. Listen live.
If you want to browse through the study score while listening to the performance, you can do so: we’ve uploaded an excerpt of the score to Universal Edition.
Under the auspices of Universal Edition, the new edition of The Makropulos Case incorporates all the surviving sources for the first time, realising Janáček’s intentions on a well-founded scholarly basis. The autograph full score was compared with three copies made under the composer’s supervision. In addition, the new edition includes valuable notes on practical performance by the renowned Janáček conductor Sir Charles Mackerras.
But when I saw the compositions he showed me – songs in a style between Hugo Wolf and Brahms – I recognized at once that he was a real talent. (Arnold Schönberg, Los Angeles, 1949)
More voice recordings of Schönberg are available on the website of the Arnold Schönberg Center.
Harrison Birtwistle’s 9 Settings of Celan will be performed tonight by Katrien Baerts and the Klangforum Wien (cond. Bas Wiegers) in the frame of the “Wort | Ton | Gestalt: Harrison Birtwistle and Paul Celan” symposium at the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg.
Download a pdf of the full programme of the symposium.
Tonight the Canadian première of Georg Friedrich Haas’ Open Spaces II | in memory of James Tenney will be performed together with other works by Zosha Di Castri, Matthew Patton and Christopher Rouse at the Winnipeg New Music Festival. Alexander Mickelthwate conducts the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
The concert will be followed by a Q&A session with composers Georg Friedrich Haas, John Luther Adams and Matthew Patton.
We recently met conductor Pablo Heras-Casado in Salzburg to talk about the influence that his mentor Pierre Boulez had on him.
The full interview will be published in mid-March in the very first issue of our MusikSalon, which will be dedicated exclusively to Pierre Boulez.
Visit our #Boulez90 blog to keep track of the latest news on Pierre Boulez and MusikSalon.
Tutuguri is vast – over two hours of music in this performance – and explosively violent. (Andrew Clements, 01.02.2015, The Guardian)
The UK première of Wolfgang Rihm’s Tutuguri was performed by Kent Nagano, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Leigh Melrose (in the role of the speaker) on 31 January at the Barbican.
Andrew Clements gave a four star review, which you can read on The Guardian. Tune in to BBC Radio 3 to listen to a recording of the première. The recording will be online until 2 March.
Last but not least, we’ve uploaded the study score of the first scene for you, which you can view here.
“Fold by fold” – this is the English translation of the French title; the text was written by Stéphane Mallarmé – is a milestone in recent music history: in this work, Mallarmé – the revolutionary innovator of French poetry – meets Pierre Boulez, whose treatment of the text and instruments reveals him to be just as much a revolutionary innovator of music. Pli selon pli is therefore not just a “Portrait de Mallarmé”, but also one of Pierre Boulez. (Bálint András Varga)
On 3 February Matthias Pintscher, soprano Marisol Montalvo, the ensemble intercontemporain and the Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris present an evening with Pierre Boulez’ Pli selon pli and Edgard Varèse’s Amériques at the Philharmonie de Paris.
Find out more on the website of the Philharmonie de Paris.
Watch an excerpt of Boulez conducting Pli selon Pli:
Charles Dutoit’s performance with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the final work in a Hungarian-themed evening, was a fine reminder of [Bluebeard’s Castle’s] power to haunt and disturb by musical means alone. (Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 28.01.2015)
Find Tim Ashley’s full review of Bluebeard’s Castle at the Royal Festival Hall on The Guardian.
Great news from our colleagues at music austria: you can now purchase and download more than 15 digital scores by Georg Friedrich Haas on their website.
The full Aldeburgh Festival 2015 programme has been announced earlier this week. Find out more on our #Boulez90 blog.
Christian Baldini and the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra will perform Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia on Saturday, 31 January, at the Music & Words Festival.
Find out more on the website of the Mondavi Center or watch a short feature on YouTube in which the conductor talks about Sinfonia and the Music & Words Festival:
Texts live their independent lives and they wait for us: each person has their own time for finding those texts. These encounters occur when the texts are no longer considered as literature or works of art, but as anchors or models. (Arvo Pärt)
Last Friday the Arvo Pärt Centre presented its first book “In principio. The Word in Arvo Pärt’s Music” in the hall of Estonian Academy of Sciences.
The book brings together 81 texts of Arvo Pärt’s works, complete with English translations. The works have been arranged chronologically, encompassing Pärt’s work over almost 60 years.
Find out more about the book on the website of the Arvo Pärt Centre.
Photos from the presentation are available on the Centre’s Facebook page.